Banner O'Brien by Linda Lael Miller

stay right here, little lady.”
    Banner drew back, her hand at her throat, and then recovered herself enough to smile. “I couldn’t do that,” she said reasonably.
    Dr. Henderson stomped the snow from his boots before stepping into the house, and his colorless eyes assessed Banner briefly, then scanned the spotless little parlor. “Somebody really cleaned the place good.”
    Jenny had vanished at the first appearance of Dr. Henderson’s buggy, and some instinct warned Banner not to mention her. Since she couldn’t very well take credit for the appearance of the house, she said nothing at all.
    Henderson sank into a chair before the fire, where Banner had been sitting reading Melissa’s epic adventure only moments before. With a grunt, he kicked off his boots and settled himself.
    Immediately a dense, cloying odor filled the room, and Banner stepped back, her oversensitive nose twitching.
    He smiled at her in a familiar way. “You’re a pretty one,” he must have suffered to say, considering his wiring. “Prettiest sawbones I ever seen.”
    Something within Banner rebelled at saying the expected “thank you.” She clasped her hands together and wondered when the boor had last changed his stockings. “I—I was given to understand that you would be away for some time,” she ventured.
    Henderson touched the wires along his jaw and tried to laugh, and the effort was painful to watch. “Takes more’n a little set-to with a whippersnapper like Corbin to run me off,” he said.
    Odious as this man was, irresponsible and even criminal as it had been to attempt surgery using opium as an anesthetic, Banner could not countenance the violence Adam had done him. “I’ve met Dr. Corbin,” she said, unwilling to express her private opinion.
    “I don’t wonder. Ain’t much happens in this town that he don’t know about.” Henderson tried to look gallant. “He didn’t bother you, did he?”
    “No,” lied Banner. “He didn’t bother me.”
    Henderson shook his balding head. “He’s got a wicked soul, that Adam Corbin. Wicked and hateful.”
    Banner knew better, but she refrained, of course, from saying so. And something inside her was overjoyed at the prospect of shocking this man. “I’ve agreed to join Adam’s practice,” she said.
    The little man glared at her. “That’s a mistake,” he said, after a rather disturbing interval.
    “I don’t think so,” argued Banner in moderate tones as she took her cloak down from a peg on the wall andput it on. That done, she found her bag and started for the door. “I’ll send someone for my things,” she said, and then she was, blessedly, outside, where the air was fresh and yet another snowfall was beginning.
    She hurried toward the center of town, on foot, mentally counting and recounting the few dollars hidden away in the bottom of her medical bag. They would be enough, she hoped, to rent a decent room.
    It was the very worst of luck that Banner fairly collided with Jeff Corbin in the doorway of the town’s one hotel. “Banner?” he breathed, squinting at her.
    Banner wondered distractedly if this dashing sea captain needed spectacles. “Hello, Jeff,” she said, trying to make her way around him and inside.
    He would not permit her to pass. “What are you doing here?” he demanded with typical Corbin directness.
    Banner lowered her eyes. “I plan to live here,” she said. “If there is a room available, that is.”
    Jeff caught her elbow in a grasp reminiscent of his brother’s and tugged her a little way down the board sidewalk, where those coming to have Sunday breakfasts in the hotel dining room would not overhear their conversation. “Here? I thought you lived—”
    Banner was wildly impatient. It seemed that she was always being dragged about or propelled these days—by a Corbin. “Dr. Henderson is back,” she snapped in a furious whisper. “Do you expect me to stay in his house with him there?”
    “Of course not. That’s